I will be there at your side
by LassieLowrider
Summary: It was first when Aziraphale faced even the mere possibility of something permanently hurting Crowley that he realised what he'd been feeling for so long. Aziraphale was an angel in love with a demon, which wouldn't hurt so much if it weren't for the fact that he could, quite literally, sense love - and he had never sensed any love from Crowley aimed at him.


Aziraphale accepted the note from Crowley, and it took a second for the two words - written in the demon's familiar scrawl - to actually register with him. It was as through an observer's eyes he experienced the rest of the conversation, a sinking feeling swooping through him.

It was first when Aziraphale faced even the mere possibility of something permanently hurting Crowley that he realised what he'd been feeling for so long.

Aziraphale was an angel in love with a demon, which wouldn't hurt so much if it weren't for the fact that he could, quite literally, sense love - and he had never sensed any love from Crowley aimed at him.

When Aziraphale storms away from the demon, he's unaware he won't see him again for nigh on 80 years. Unbeknownst to the angel, Crowley decides a nap is in order and accidentally sleeps for 75 years.

Aziraphale thinks that maybe - and the thought is more than unbearable, it's unimaginable, but he can't help but think… what if Crowley got ahold of that water, despite Aziraphale refusing to help him? What if something went wrong and Crowley's - gone? Worse, what if something went right, according to Crowley, and he's gone?

When the thought strikes him, Aziraphale - for the first time ever on his own - gets absolutely souzed. He drinks himself into oblivion, because the thought of a world without Crowley is the thought of a world not worth living in.

Time goes on, as is its wont, and every year that passes without Aziraphale even hearing word about Crowley is a year where he breaks down further, entirely certain the demon is gone forever. He may have just recently realised it, but he's loved Crowley for a very long time, and even if the feeling isn't returned - won't ever be returned, for that matter - at least he had his friendship.

The sheer relief of seeing Crowley hot-footing it into the church almost makes Aziraphale faint - only the fact that there are also three nazis in the church keeps him upright. The realisation of how much it hurts, well, that creates a seed of false hope in Aziraphale's heart.

Then he saves the books and if Aziraphale wasn't in love before he absolutely is now, and the seed grows roots, tiny tiny tendrils of hope.

When Crowley offers him a lift home, when he doesn't even hint about their conversation in the park - when Crowley talks about his car, Aziraphale feels a tendril of love shoot through the demon's aura.

The seed sprouts.

Despite himself, despite his misgivings about it, when he hears about Crowley planning a caper, of all things, just to get the holy water, well. Aziraphale gets on with blessing. Now, an angelic prayer isn't all that much more powerful than a human prayer, but an angelic blessing performed out of love?

Nothing holier.

What took the longest, however, was finding a tartan thermos. He could have miracled one, of course, but that would have made it all feel cheap, somehow. Then again, the tartan thermos flask wasn't expensive, but the effort he had to go to to find one made it feel… more, somehow.

Handing it over feels almost like signing his own death warrant, rather than signing Crowley's - but somehow, it feels almost like it'd be better if it's holy water Aziraphale himself has blessed, instead of holy water from a church. Who knows how badly blessed it'd be, anyway?

No, better he die by love, if he necessarily had to.

Aziraphale had a hope that he'd know when Crowley used the water, if it was his own - and Aziraphale had access to hellfire, if necessary.

A world without Crowley was not a world worth living in. That, Aziraphale felt, was an undeniable truth.

"You go too fast for me, Crowley," he said, having given the demon the flask that could spell both their ends. Between one blink of an eye and the next, Aziraphale is gone from the car. He had felt a sense of wonder from Crowley in the moment he was handed the tartan flask, a feeling that renewed the little seed that sprouted over two decades earlier.

That sprout is a tiny sapling of desperate hope, nourished by every angel Crowley utters.

All of it - the ridiculous hope, thoughts of what might happen, all of it - takes a backseat when Crowley calls, and all of a sudden time is at a premium. Eleven years. That hopeful sprout honestly takes the backseat in a car fifty cars back in a mile long queue.

Aziraphale didn't have a single clue what on God's green earth made him agree to raising the Antichrist, but something did. What possesses him to be the gardener is even more inexplicable.

Crowley adores Warlock, despite himself - Aziraphale can feel the love Warlock feels being mirrored, amplified, returned by the demon. The sprout moves a few cars closer. If Crowley can love the Antichrist, can love what seems a human child, thinks Aziraphale, mayhaps he could…

Aziraphale isn't ashamed to admit (if the right entity asks) that the years he spent as Brother Francis are the best of his existence - not because it was rewarding (it was, raising a child and all) but because he gets to spend so much time almost close to Crowley. They've spent the ages orbiting one another, and during the Dowling estate years their orbits come close enough to be almost one and the same.

Warlock had asked, in the innocently curious way of children everywhere, if he was in love with 'Nanny Ashtoreth'. Aziraphale found he couldn't lie, not about that. As an angel he shouldn't be lying, period, but - sometimes, white lies were better than the truth. He tried to deny it, of course he did but he loved Crowley too much to ever say the opposite, even in the guise of a gardener and a nanny.

"Why don't you marry Nanny, Brother Francis?" Warlock asked, and Aziraphale choked on nothing. "If you love her, shouldn't you marry her? That's what mummy and daddy did." Aziraphale, very carefully, didn't let his thoughts about Mr. and Mrs. Dowling's loving (or lack thereof) marriage show on his face.

"B'cause, m'dear boy," Aziraphale said, voice thick with unshed tears, "while I adore Nanny most ardently, she doesn't return the feeling."

In return, Warlock had only given him a long look, mannerism older than his years, and shook his head before dropping the subject. Aziraphale didn't know quite what to make of that, so he put it out of his mind in favour of showing Warlock where a sparrow had her nest.

Armageddon came ever closer, all of it culminating when the hell hound didn't show up. They had officially lost the Antichrist (and probably traumatised another child, all for nothing). Aziraphale couldn't bring himself to regret any of it, however; he'd been allowed, almost encouraged even, to spend a lot of time in close quarters with Crowley - what was there to regret?

What Aziraphale did regret was that he didn't have time to tell Crowley where the Antichrist was - and therefore where Armageddon was happening - before he was discorporated. Thankfully he didn't meet any of the higher up angels while indisposed, so making his way back to Earth worked out quite well, despite it all.

Crowley, dear, beloved, unbelievable Crowley. Aziraphale was for the first time happy he can't see the demon. He could hear him, and that was enough. Crowley was drunk enough that had he been human he'd be dead by alcohol poisoning, and he sounded wrecked. Aziraphale didn't know who the friend was, but Crowley was clearly torn up about it happening. Yet, the demon had managed to save the book, the only book that actually mattered in the long run.

Then, Armageddon. The sheer relief Aziraphale felt, seeing the blazing inferno that had once been an immaculate Bentley driving up to the army base - nothing had ever come close.

In the middle of a battle for the rest of the world, an angel threatened a demon, and time stopped. When time started again, humanity had two occult beings and the Antichrist on their side - and not even the Great Plan could beat that. It was simply ineffable.

Going on advice from a seer 400 years dead might seem, well, inadvisable, but that was all they had, so they did. Hell was awful, and Aziraphale swore to himself he'd do anything in his power to prevent Crowley from going back. By the looks on the faces of the assembled demons, he'd pretty much managed, too.

When everything is said and done, faces swapped back and the world toasted, they go back to the bookshop that is miraculously standing, as is their wont. Aziraphale resists the urge to catalogue the contents in favour of corking up a beautiful bottle of '97 Napa cabernet sauvignon.

They're well into their fourth bottle by the time Aziraphale brings it up.

"I am sorry, dear boy, about your friend," he says, not noticing Crowley's eyes widening behind his glasses. He does notice when the demon chokes on the mouthful of wine he'd just taken, though. "Whatever is the matter, Crowley?"

"My friend? What on earth are you talking about, angel?" Crowley's too shocked to manage the scorn he was going for, ending up somewhere around worried instead.

"You said you lost your best friend, and you were grieving and," the angel in question says, a bit too drunk to care about how worked up he's getting over a being he doesn't even know. "And then I had to interrupt your grieving and, well."

Crowley opens his mouth to say something, closes it again. Raises a finger as if to say first of all, but changes it to whipping his sunglasses off, tucking them into a pocket and rubbing at his eyes with the other hand. He picks up the glass of Bordeaux that burns like tequila going down.

"Are you daft? You really are the stupidest clever person I've ever even seen," Crowley finally says, serpentine eyes focusing (with difficulty) on the angel on the other side of the table. Aziraphale feels like he should be offended, but he's a bit too drunk to actually manage the effort for feeling anything but relief. "It was you, angel. I'd lost you. The bookshop was burning and I couldn't feel you anywhere, and I genuinely thought I was too late."

Aziraphale's glass of pinot noir turns into a rather surprised tumbler of whiskey without him noticing. A sprout, smothered by the events of the past eleven years, turns green again. He sternly tells that useless hope to quiet down, please, nothing for you here.

"I'm sorry, dear boy, what - me?" If Aziraphale knew anything about computers, he'd liken his current mental state to the infamous blue screen of death.

"Of course you, who else would it be?" Crowley put his glasses back on. Aziraphale mourns the hiding of his absolutely beautiful eyes.

"You said - on the phone - old friend?" Aziraphale feels at a loss for words, a first while in the company of Crowley.

"Hastur and Ligur - well, only Hastur by then, I'd melted Ligur," Crowley says, waving it off as if he hasn't rocked Aziraphale's world to its foundations in only a short conversation.

"But - even though I said all those - I was mean, Crowley!" He knows he's more or less working himself into a fit, swallows the Bordeaux-turned-whiskey in one go, not that that's likely to help. "I shouldn't be a - a priority! Especially not in the middle of Armageddon!"

They're both really drunk by now, which is probably the only reason Crowley says what he does.

"Well, I've been in love with you for six thousand years, angel, a little spat isn't gonna change that, is it?" It takes a minute for it to dawn on them what he just said, Crowley a second quicker on the uptake and therefore a second quicker to sober up. When Aziraphale's sober again, Crowley is halfway to the door.

"Crowley! Crowley, stay!" he says, not half as loud as he tried but apparently loud enough. The demon stops, defeat in the slump of his shoulders. Aziraphale crosses the shop floor quickly enough not even he is certain whether he used a miracle to do it or not. He reaches out to touch Crowley, but the demon flinches away before he makes contact, turning around and drawing himself up. Aziraphale gets the feeling he's trying to make himself larger, more intimidating - less likely to be hurt.

"What, Aziraphale?" he hisses, glaring - not that Aziraphale can see that, but he knows him. Knows how he will be glaring behind the glasses, knows that he's hurting simply by the way he's hissing on every word. Knows that Aziraphale loves Crowley and - Crowley loves Aziraphale? "You don't feel the same so let me go home to lick my wounds in peace and then we can have dinner in - a year or something, when I'm past the embarrassment."

"No, dear, I just never thought…" he trails off, raising a hand to hover uncertainly between them.

"What? Because I'm a demon, and I can't feel love?" Crowley takes a step back, and Aziraphale lets the hand drop.

"Of course you can feel love! You love the Bentley, you loved Warlock, you even love feeding the ducks!" His tone is strident, he has to make Crowley understand. "I have felt your love for one thing after another for centuries, Crowley, so your ability to love was never the question!"

"Then what! What is so surprising about the fact that I love you, have loved you and will continue to love you until She sees fit to remake the universe, and I can't guarantee that will make me stop loving you?!" Crowley says, taking several steps forward until Aziraphale is forced to back up or be walked into. It's the same as when they were at the former convent, not even a week ago, yet the air is charged in a way it wasn't then.

"Because I never thought you could feel the same for me as I feel for you, dearest." The words bring Crowley to a halt.

"...what?"

"I love you too, Crowley. Have for a very long time." Again, Aziraphale brings his hand up, this time Crowley doesn't flinch back, so he puts his hand to his cheek. "I never felt an inkling from you, that you would feel the same - never did I dare hope."

Crowley turns his cheek into Aziraphale's hand, brings his own up to hold it, to keep it there. He doesn't resist when the angel reaches up and takes his glasses off, and Aziraphale's breath catches at the look in his eyes.

Crowley leans down, hesitating a hair's breadth from Aziraphale's lips, the two of them sharing unneeded breaths - Aziraphale can't take it anymore, leans up and closes the last few millimetres between them. As he does, as he kisses Crowley like he's wanted to for two hundred years, he can't help but whimper.

Aziraphale can feel Crowley's love for him, and all of a sudden he realises that the reason he's never felt it is simply because he's been missing the forest for all the trees. The love Crowley feels is so all-encompassing, ever-present, that Aziraphale's been so enveloped in it he hasn't even noticed.

They're so in-sync that they don't know who pulls the other closer, who deepens the kiss, but they stay there, kissing in the middle of the bookshop, for a long time. When they eventually break the kiss, Crowley leans his forehead to Aziraphale's, eyes closed but with a small smile on his face.

"If I'm dreaming, angel, please don't wake me up just yet," he murmurs, running his fingers through Aziraphale's hair. Aziraphale can't help but lean into it, is as close to purring as a non-cat ever gets. Nonetheless, he's the first of them to pull away.

"I am so sorry, dearest, that I didn't tell you, but - well, I think I just didn't see the forest for the trees, and well," he says, watching as Crowley opens his eyes. For the first time, he sees the love shining in them for what it is. The smile on Crowley's face is fond, and Aziraphale can't believe how he never saw it before. "I could never believe you'd love me like this."

"You'd better believe it, angel - and now I'm definitely not ever going to stop loving you."

As declarations of ever-lasting love go, it's maybe not the flashiest, but it is the most sincere Aziraphale has ever heard.

An angel and a demon go to bed together in a flat in Soho, for the first time daring to cuddle close and whisper sweet nothings that have been on the tip of their tongues for almost as long the Earth's been around.

I do not play dice with the universe; I play an ineffable game of My own devising and this - this was always one of the sidequests.

-linebreak-

**Crossposted to AO3. I'm on tumblr as isauntervaguelydownwards.**


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